


Infirmary Blues

by JumpingJackFlash



Category: Homestuck
Genre: #tw: karkat's laundry, #tw: string cheese, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, alien space flu, dave is an asshole, knight bros, meteorfic, terezi laughs at your suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-18
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-16 13:09:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JumpingJackFlash/pseuds/JumpingJackFlash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Dave's jokes gets a little too tasteless, and Karkat locks himself in his room. Is this the end of their friendship? Were they even friends to begin with? Why is Dave the only one flipping out about this?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Infirmary Blues

**Author's Note:**

> [this is the 100-words-a-day-even-if-i-don't-feel-like-it exercise i did after 'lee shore'. so if it feels a bit rambly, it's because it was written without an outline over the course of about a month. someday i will be well enough to get back to my plotty longfics... someday...
> 
> in the meantime, have a quick tumble down a short flight of friendship stairs.]

It probably started with the ebola joke.  
  
Going to the kitchen without a shirt wasn't something Dave did often, but he didn't think it needed to be a federal issue either. Just got out of the shower, sudden craving for string cheese, no big deal. He barely glanced at Karkat on his way to the fridge.  
  
Grumpy was hunched over a piece of paper at the table, totally absorbed in murdering crayons scribble by scribble. Probably writing another of the furious announcements that had been accumulating on every cabinet and appliance. Dave tried to guess what this one would say. The one currently posted on the fridge at eye-level read: WILL WHOEVER USED THE LAST OF THE MAYONNAISE AND DIDN'T ALCHEMIZE MORE PLEASE DO ME THE KINDNESS OF DYING IN A PAINFUL AND EMBARRASSING POWER-TOOL MASTURBATION ACCIDENT. Karkat Vantas: taking the passive out of passive-aggressive roommate notes.  
  
As he bent to rummage in the drawer he'd last seen the string cheese in, he heard a quiet gasp. He considered trying to make something of it ( _don't know how you can be shocked by the plushness of my rump at this point, not like you haven't been tracking its movements for months_ ) but it'd just be too easy.  
  
"Strider, what the fuck is wrong with your arm?"  
  
Arm? Dave straightened up, cheese package in hand, and gave Karkat a blank look, daring him to make sense. Karkat's expression was as much alarm as anger.  
  
"It looks like you're rotting from the inside. It's disgusting."  
  
Well, now he had to look. He didn't see anything weird, though. Just his fine guns and pale skin and a bruise from where Karkat knocked him into a chair a couple days ago when they were roughhousing...  
  
Come to think of it, what with how opaque troll skin was, troll bruises probably didn't look like anything. Certainly nothing like the green-edged purplegray monstrosity blooming just above Dave's elbow. An idea occurred to him, too beautiful not to go through with. But he'd have to play it understated or it wouldn't fly, not face to face.  
  
He smoothed his expression except for the slightest hint of a grimace. "You weren't supposed to see that," he said quietly, and went back to fridge-rummaging even though he already had his snack. Give Karkles a minute to stew. Wait for it... wait for it...  
  
Karkat exploded out of his chair and charged across the kitchen to grab Dave by the elbow. "What the fuck do you mean I wasn't supposed to see it? You're the one marching around in an obscene state of undress. Just tell me what the hell I'm looking at!"  
  
"It's just -- nothing. Don't worry about it." Dave knew he wouldn't be able to keep a straight face if he looked at Karkat, so he pretended to pretend to be interested in the fridge in a vague but urgent way. He thought that was fairly realistic.  
  
"Don't worry about it?" Karkat burst. "Right, because that's not the most worrying thing you could've said! Do I need to drag Lalonde into this? Because I will summon her. So help me, Strider, I will summon Lalonde with the news that you are rotting like a zombie and acting _extremely fucking shifty about it_ , and she --"  
  
"No, man, wait." Dave slammed the fridge door. "Don't tell her. Please."  
  
Karkat's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Then explain yourself."  
  
"You have to promise you won't tell _anyone_." When that didn't do the trick, Dave laid it on a little thicker. "Look, I might have weeks, I don't want you all spending the whole time making mopey faces at me."  
  
"Weeks. For what."  
  
Calculated hesitation. "To live."  
  
"What." Those dark, furious, expressive eyes widened in horror for a second, then re-narrowed in renewed suspicion. Karkat suddenly licked his thumb and scrubbed hard at the bruise.  
  
"Ow! Asshole. It's not makeup."  
  
" _Then what the fuck is it?_ "  
  
"Ebola. Invariably fatal. No cure. I'm a goner."  
  
And that was supposed to be the punchline. Karkat was supposed to realize he'd been strung along, and Dave figured he'd probably punch the bruise in retaliation, but it'd be worth it.  
  
That wasn't what happened, though. Instead, Karkat's face crumpled into a look of utter grief and betrayal. He whirled around with a hoarse, wordless yell and kicked the table over.  
  
"Whoa. What the fuck, Karkles."  
  
"No," Karkat spat. "You do _not_ get to call me that when you just -- how can you be so fucking _calm_ about it?"  
  
"You know how many times I've died, dude? It's not special anymore." _And if that doesn't clue you in..._  
  
"Oh, that's right." A deep breath with a little shudder in it. Wow, he was barely holding something down, and Karkat never held _anything_ down. "You're the Douche of Time. You can go back and stop yourself doing -- whatever you did that caused -- you can undo it."  
  
Dave was feeling pretty uncomfortable by this point. He kind of wanted to fess up, but he couldn't quite think how. Rolling with it was just easier. "That'd doom us all, man. I don't need to be splitting timelines this late in the game."  
  
"But the other you would live, right? I mean you'd be alive somewhere. You wouldn't be. All dead in all the timelines and we'd just have to. Fucking. Wave to your freaky blank stare whenever your dreambubble went past."  
  
Dave learned something new about trolls: their voices didn't crack the same way human voices did when they were crying. It happened in a lower register, all static and fragmentary growls. It sounded somehow even worse than the human version, and those pinkish tears were just straight-up freaky.  
  
Karkat scrubbed a sleeve across his eyes and babbled on. "I'm not losing another one of us, okay? That is a thing that is not going to happen ever fucking again, even if you have to back this meteor all the way up the timeline into the sphincter of the grub that birthed it. Do you understand this, Strider? This is Holy Writ from your vengeful god. You figure out how far you need to go to fix this and then you _fucking go there_."  
  
Okay, there was no pretty way out of this. He was just going to have to take the ugly way. "Stop crying, man, it was a joke," he blurted.  
  
"How stupid do you think I am? The rotten patch is right fucking there!"  
  
"It's just a bruise!" Dave's voice cracked in the usual squeaky human way; he blamed it on puberty. "Dude, I didn't think you'd actually _believe_ me. It's a bruise."  
  
Karkat's mouth snapped shut, pressed thin. His eyes hardened. His nostrils flared. Oh shit, when he found his words this was going to be a category five.  
  
Dave talked fast to stall him. "It's from when I did that rad Jackie Chan slapstick-fu backroll over a chair a couple days ago. It's a normal bruise, dude. I was joking about the ebola. Ebola doesn't even look like that. I don't actually know what ebola looks like. But not that. You were supposed to catch on when I said I'm a goner, I was being cheezy as shit --"  
  
Karkat turned on his heel and strode out without another word.  
  
* * *  
  
It took Dave two days to nerve up to an apology. Not that he wasn't sorry, but Karkat hadn't come out of his room the whole time and it was hard to be sympathetic to a closed door. He tried, though. He knocked for ages before he heard a sound from inside: shuffling footsteps coming toward the door.  
  
Then the click of a lock. The footsteps shuffled away again. Dave tried the door, but it wouldn't budge; Karkat had been locking, not unlocking.  
  
"Oh come the fuck _on_ ," Dave burst.  
  
But no, he was in the wrong here, he had to go easy on the guy.  
  
"Okay, fine. I'll just shout it through the door for everybody to hear. Look, man, I'm sorry. I honestly didn't think you'd believe me. Or if you did I figured I'd just get you to make me sandwiches and like... be nice to me for a couple hours. I forgot about your whole dead friend PTSD thing."  
  
Nothing. He took a deep breath and summoned as much Strider chill as it took to keep the irritation out of his voice.  
  
"I was a douche. I own it. It's all on me. So you can quit hiding in there like a sulky little dick and get back to being all up in my grill screaming about stupid shit like the desperate spastic we all know and love. I mean that in the nicest way possible. It's fucking boring around here without you, man. Jesus, _say_ something."  
  
Still fucking nothing.  
  
"Look, would you at least log on so I can message you?"  
  
Apparently not.  
  
"Well... awesome." Dave shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled away with studied nonchalance.  
  
An hour later, he picked a fight with Terezi over nothing. She argued rings around him with an infuriatingly knowing smirk, and she just about had him flipping tables before he caught on that she was riling him on purpose. Shortly after that, Rose walked up and handed him a pint of chocolate ice cream with no explanation whatsoever. He made some very dry remarks about breakup movies and not getting asked to prom while he ate it, but he did eat it.  
  
* * *  
  
The next day he was back at Karkat's door. "Jesus dick, Vantas, would you at least eat something? This is straight-up fucking stupid, just quit being stubborn and come out. I don't know why I'm the only asshole who's worried about this marathon sulk bullshit. Goddammit open your fucking door."  
  
No answer.  
  
He was worried enough to bring up the topic with Rose, who informed him that some non-perishables had recently vanished from the kitchen. Karkat was living on crackers and Faygo in there, but at least he wasn't starving.  
  
This news gave Dave the indignation he needed to pretend very convincingly that he didn't give a flying fuck for three more days.  
  
* * *  
  
He'd written most of the apology rap before he realized what he was even writing. The rhymes had just happened to fall that way somehow. Once he caught on, he gave a mental shrug and finished it the way it wanted to be finished; nobody had to hear it. So what if he wrote a song about Karkat? He wasn't some droopy crooner with an acoustic guitar rhyming 'heart' with 'apart' here. It was a rap, for fuck's sake. Plenty of rappers wrote songs about their bros. Didn't mean they wanted to bone them.  
  
 _Whoa. That came out of left field. Since when is that even on the table?_  
  
Like a guy couldn't care about another guy without it having to involve balls touching. No. They weren't even that close. If Dave was going to have a crisis of sexuality, it'd be about John, who was cute and dorky and inadvertently flirty, who said things like 'you are attractive and i am attracted to you', who was -- crucial point here -- _human_ and had at least some remote idea what kind of emotions would be under discussion if this hypothetical crisis were to occur.  
  
Not Karkat, who was an obtuse, shit-talking scorn dispenser with weird black lips and freaky yellow claws, and who seemed to be under the impression that human love was simply a primitive stopgap because they hadn't evolved the far superior troll system.  
  
Yeah, fuck that noise. Karkat even sucked at being bros. He wasn't worth all this overanalysis.  
  
And it wasn't like Dave was having wet dreams. In fact, his dreams lately were mostly kind of horrific and involved gruesome things happening to Karkat that were in some baffling and unfixable way Dave's fault.  
  
* * *  
  
He dreamed another of those dreams the next time he slept.  
  
He printed the apology rap out and shoved the piece of paper under Karkat's door.  
  
Then he waited.  
  
Then nothing.  
  
* * *  
  
The day after that, he resorted to hooking up some speakers and blasting 'Baby Come Back' at Karkat's door until Kanaya came by and made him stop.  
  
"I am worried about him as well," she admitted, "but you may wish to find another way to express it. That song counts as a black solicitation, which I assume is not your intent. Unless I'm mistaken about that...?"  
  
"Shut up, it's a great song," he said, but he was packing up the speakers as he said it. He should've known the old boombox serenade trick was too ironic for Karkat.  
  
* * *  
  
The next day Karkat came out of his room.  
  
Dave stared wordlessly at him as he shuffled into the living room, while the others made remarks with the appropriate level of concern-hidden-beneath-jokes. Karkat seemed dazed, his shoulders hunched, his hair flattened like he'd been sleeping, but he grumbled some short responses in a raspy voice on his way toward the coffeemaker. His skin was precisely the same shade of gray as always, but his _horns_ seemed pale, which was something Dave had never seen before.  
  
Karkat's trajectory was going to take him past Dave. Dave debated whether to say anything. In the end he decided to let the poor guy get his coffee first.  But Karkat stopped in front of Dave, lifted his head -- his eyes were even more dark-ringed than usual, which lent him an odd kind of gothic appeal -- and gave a dismissive snort.  
  
"You're loud, irritating, mindlessly persistent, and a terrible rapper. But in principle I appreciate your concern. It's your execution that sucked."  
  
Hurt, Dave blurted, "You're not even _worth_ all the fucking sleep I lost over this shit, what is _wrong_ with you? Why couldn't you just accept my goddamn apology, why'd it have to be this whole big thing?"  
  
"Your apology?" Karkat looked entirely nonplussed. "You think I was hiding because I was mad at you? Are you fucking retarded?"  
  
"What the fuck else --"  
  
"No." And when Dave opened his mouth again, Karkat cut him off with a sharp gesture. "No. Allow me to present for your consideration: no. We also have a fine selection of fuck no."  
  
"Then what --"  
  
"And the narcissistic jackass shuts up. That's you, and the time when that happens is now. For shit's sake, Strider, I had a respiratory infection. I was in quarantine. Get over yourself." He turned dismissively and continued on toward the coffeemaker.  
  
Dave took a moment to process this, and to scramble for the remains of his cool. "Quick science fact: you can't actually give your computer a virus by coughing on it. By which I mean why the fuck didn't you message anyone?"  
  
"I did, dumbass," Karkat said, with a jerk of his head in the general direction of Terezi. "Are we seriously out of cocoa? I am going to chew a hole in somebody."  
  
"No, there should be some left." Rose drifted over to help him, declining to let Dave catch her eye.  
  
He tried glaring at Terezi. This was an exercise in futility for a number of reasons.  
  
The glare had slightly more effect on Kanaya; or rather, presumably, his crossed arms and linemouth did, since this was definitely not a shades-removal type situation. She gave him a rather sympathetic shrug.  
  
Karkat, now clutching a monster-sized mug of weird-coffemaker cocoa, shufflehunched past again. "Well done leaving me the fuck alone, everyone. Perfectly executed. Keep up the good work."  
  
"Isn't that what you wanted?" Rose said.  
  
"Yeah. That wasn't sarcasm. Thanks." And with that he zombied out the door and was gone.  
  
Dave let out a long breath. "Seriously feeling a little ganged up on here. You all knew?"  
  
"I've been informed," Rose said, "that when trolls are ill, they tend to lash out at anyone who comes near them. With potentially lethal consequences. His 'quarantine' was a precaution, not against contagion, but against bloodshed. Although I'm certainly pleased no one else got sick."  
  
"Not the _point_ ," Dave snapped. "Which one of you asshats said 'hey you know what would be funny would be if we didn't tell Dave! How about we just let him think Karkles is suddenly being a troglodyte because his dumb prank broke the fucker's ragey little soul, that'll be hysterical!' Terezi, I'm looking at you."  
  
"Thanks for telling me, I didn't know," Terezi deadpanned.  
  
Kanaya had gone back to her sewing project when Karkat left. Now she took some pins from her mouth in order to say, with totally uncalled-for gentleness, "If you'd known he was sick you would've rushed to his side despite the risks, Dave."  
  
"Well of _course_ I fucking -- hey now. Can't a bro worry about a bro without glowy dames throwing romantic language around?"  
  
"You certainly are sensitive about the subject," Rose smirked, draping herself gracefully across a chair near Kanaya. "Perhaps we shouldn't tease you." She took out a piece of knitting and pretended great interest in it.  
  
Terezi snickered, and he braced himself for more along those lines. But instead she said, "You would've, though. Because of the obligations of bro-hood! Whether he could've actually hurt you is beside the point. He needed rest, not strifes."  
  
Dave hesitated. He sighed surrender. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks for not being a massive tool about it like the local textile industry."  
  
"Also you're totally pale for him, you homewrecker," she grinned.  
  
Rolling his eyes, Dave turned to go. "Thanks rescinded. I'm done with _all_ y'all clowns."  
  
"There's canned soup in the kitchen," Rose said without looking up. "I advise against tomato. Don't forget to bring him a napkin."  
  
Dave had genuinely had no intention of bringing Karkat soup or any other damn thing, but if he protested now he'd just look petty. Damn sisters and their damn psychology.  
  
* * *  
  
"That better not be Strider," Karkat rasped when Dave thumped the door with his foot.  
  
"Open up, my hands are full."  
  
There was a groan. "Go away, Strider. _Please_ go away."  
  
"Wait, I think I got this." He backed up and delicately prodded at the door handle with his toe until it turned and the door swung open. "Shit yeah," he said as he came in and shut it with his heel. "Bitches don't know 'bout my crane style."  
  
Karkat regarded him with baleful resignation from the depths of his hammock. Rose had knit hammocks for all of the trolls when she learned they slept better with something coccooned around them. She'd knit them out of clothesline with a pair of sharpened broomsticks. Then she'd started making afghans. Karkat was just a pair of sunken eyes and a set of horns like baby carrots sticking out of a wooly zigzag-stitch landfill.  
  
"By 'go away'," he croaked, "I mean go away."  
  
"Blame Rose. She psychologied me into this." He set down the bowl of soup and thermos of tea on a vaguely technological-looking metal crate that seemed to be serving as a bedside table. "Ham and potato, man. Good stuff. I put cheese in it, too, that's just basic decency. Potato soup without cheese is like a track without a bass drop." Then he turned to wrinkle his nose at the room in general distaste. "Smells like a damn diaper pail in here, dude. Gross."  
  
"I'm so glad you decided to stop by and judge me for being unable to do laundry while --" Karkat broke off with a hacking cough.  
  
"Where's your hamper?" Dave started scooping clothes and discarded bedding off the floor.  
  
"Wait! Don't --"  
  
"Ew, oh my God, what did I just touch."  
  
Karkat facepalmed with a handful of blanket. "I coughed so hard I puked, okay? Look, just... stop. I didn't ask you to."  
  
Dave pretended he hadn't heard that. He imagined having to sleep in a room with his own puke for days because he didn't trust anyone enough to let them take care of him. And if Karkat still wasn't up to picking things up off the floor, he probably wasn't well enough to have come out yet. Was it Dave's fault? Had he left his danky den of sick-funk because of Dave's audio harrassment rather than out of a genuine need for cocoa? From the look of him right now, he was nowhere near over his alien flu thing.  
  
Dave bundled everything into a sheet and set it outside the door. He washed his hands in the little attached bathroom, then brought Karkat a damp towel. When Karkat just eyed it suspiciously, he waggled it with an expectant lift of his eyebrows. "I bet you want to wipe your hands before you eat."  
  
"I'm not eating," Karkat said, but he took the towel and used it.  
  
"You know what, let's just skip the part where you think I can't be more obnoxious than you are patient. We both know you're going to eat this soup. You might as well just give in while it's still hot."  
  
Karkat tried to stare him down. Dave's shades would've defeated him even if Karkat's eyes _weren't_ bloodshot and watering. Karkat sighed. "I'll try," he conceded.  
  
Dave brought the bowl. Once he saw Karkat could hold it and feed himself without spilling it, he sat down on the crate, setting the tea flask on the floor.  
  
"Kanaya was right," he said after a while. "She said if they told me you were sick I'd have tried to take care of you anyway. Goddamn _right_ I would've. I don't care if you were all combative and shit, you could've fucking _died_."  
  
Karkat dropped the spoon in the bowl, closed his eyes, and took a long breath through his nose. Patiently, as if explaining to an idiot, he said, "I already have a moirail."  
  
"Yeah, humans don't do that," Dave pointed out.  
  
"Then what _are_ you doing? Apologizing for that stupid prank? I wouldn't have believed you for a second if I wasn't already coming down with this. It was juvenile and unkind, yes. It was also totally fucking implausible and it's my own damn fault I was fished in. Also I accept your apology so for fuck's sake shut _up_ about it already."  
  
"No, man. Look. I'm just." Dave shoved both hands through his hair. "We're friends."  
  
"We are?"  
  
"Don't give me that shit. You know we are. I wouldn't fight so much with someone I didn't like. And friends don't just leave friends to fend for themselves when they're coughing up puke from the alien canceraids. So how about you shut your grumble aperture and finish your fucking soup."  
  
"How am I supposed to eat with my mouth shut, idiot?" Karkat said, and damn if that wasn't a smile.  
  
"Be creative," Dave smirked.  
  
The smile widened. Karkat was fighting it, but it was winning. "Okay, 'grumble aperture' was good. I'll give you that."  
  
"Copyright Strider. Accept no imitations."  
  
"Who the hell would want to imitate _you_?" Now the smile was an out-and-out grin. Dave found himself mirroring it.  
  
He was already planning what kind of soup to bring Karkat next time.  
  
\- end -


End file.
